nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Geek Help

March 14, 2005

Help! I’m having an issue that I just can’t seem to figure out… Hopefully someone here will be able to point me in the right direction. I *think* the problem is with pipes in Windows (XP SP2 specifically) but I’m not completely sure.

Basically, I’m doing this: nc 192.168.0.1 10567 < hugefile.gz on the Windows box, and the destination has been Linux, Windows XP, and OS X, all with the same result.

Hugefile is somewhere around 22GB… What happens is that seemingly no matter where the destination is, it just stops sending after a while, usually with the output file on the target machine being 23MB-24MB. This size is not consistant. I’ve also gotten these results across a pocket-sized 100MB switch, the company’s switch to which I’m connected, etc.

I really don’t know what’s up… I think it’s Windows pipes, or some sort of buffer somewhere?

Sending from Linux to Windows works just fine, as this was how I created the image. (dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -c | nc -w 15 192.168.0.2)

Does anyone have any ideas? I’m really lost…

UPDATE: A bit more info… This is what I see on the sending side:

nc -v -v -v -w 30 130.175.142.190 10567 < createdimage.gz p-p-p-powerbook.XXXXX.XX.XXX.XXX [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] 10567 (?) open net timeout sent 24887296, rcvd 0: NOTSOCK

And on the target side:

nc -l -v -v -v -p 10567 > createdimage.gz
listening on [any] 10567 …
connect to [130.175.142.190] from XXXXXX-notebook.XXXXX.XX.XXX.XXX [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] 4244
sent 0, rcvd 24215552

So, yeah. I’m running out of ideas…

computersmoved from livejournal

Holland Ponds Park in Shelby Township, Michigan

March 9, 2005


Click for more…

On Sunday I decided to celebrate the warmish weather and go for a walk through one of my favorite, curious local parks, Holland Ponds. (Thanks to for reminding me of the proper name of this facility.) For an hour or two I wandered through the park, looking around, taking pictures of various things. For those who don’t know, this park is located right next to the G&H Landfill site, an EPA Superfund project. It’s really interesting to see how far the site has come from it’s previous use as a waste dump. While I did find some barrels ( 1 · 2 ) floating in the river – which I reported to the EPA and National Response Center (Report #752142) – this was a really nice walk and I got a much better feel for how everything is laid out there. By the time I was done, my boots and the lower half of my pants were completely saturated, but it was worth it. All the snow was melting, the sun was out, and it was almost 50°F that day.

So, if you’d like to see some pictures from the walk, give this link a click. Towards the end of the gallery there are some interesting concrete textures that I grabbed from the foundation of a barn.

moved from livejournaloutdoors

DHS/EPA?

March 8, 2005

Hmm, that’s interesting. I called the EPA about the barrels I found, they took the report, then asked me to call the National Response Center, which I believe is part of the Coast Guard and thusly DHS. Interestingly, one of the phone options was to report terrorist activity.

I’ve got a report number, and we’ll see where the barrels go from here.

moved from livejournaloutdoors

EPA?

March 8, 2005

Hmm, so I’m thinking about calling the EPA regarding barrels I found in the Clinton River along the Superfund site of G&H Landfill.

· http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/hollandponds06march2005/DSCN0385
· http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/hollandponds06march2005/DSCN0362

moved from livejournaloutdoors

TiVo!

March 1, 2005

After what turns out to have been wasting around three hours trying to make it work via Vonage, my TiVo is working. Without connecting it to a phone line.

How?

Well, it seems that on newer TiVo models, if you boot them with a supported USB network adapter attached (most all of them are supported) and you set the modem’s dialing string to ,#401 it’ll appear to be dialing the modem and such, but instead it’ll connect via ethernet.

Imagine that…

Well, the TiVo is now all set up with USB network adapter and all. Being a good geek, I didn’t properly cable it yet, because I wasn’t certain if it had worked or not. But now that it did, I’ll fix it tomorrow.

I’ve also subscribed to a season pass of Good Eats, and the episode of Frontline showing at 3:30am should be recorded. We’ll see how it goes.

Regardless, I’m satisfied. I just wish that the Ethernet-based option for setting up the Tivo would have been a bit more obvious.

I must say, it’s a pretty nifty device… There’s lots of things you can tweak, including a built-in guide for programming the remote to control your HT gear’s volume and mute, turning on and off the front LEDs (this is big to me), network settings, internal diags, log access, etc. Definitely a nice box.

…and now I sleep.

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournalmovies

+++ATH0

March 1, 2005

Wow, what a beautiful morning. While the drive to work wasn’t the quickest, it really was beautiful. Only an hour and fifteen minutes… I wish I was off work today so that I could plod through a park taking pictures of the snow hanging off of the trees. It’s just heavy enough to stick to absolutely everything, and the wind isn’t really blowing so the snow is tending to stick on things. (Snow!)

Also, the 40GB iPod Photo I ordered fully charged last night, so I synched it and started using it today. I must say, the display is much easier to read, especially while driving. It just looks a lot smoother, and more text can fit on the screen. The album art is also a nice perk. (Photo) Now I just need to get the old one cleaned up and ready to be sold on eBay.

Tonight I’m supposed to head over to my parents house to do some work on their computer. I also need to bring the TiVo so it can do it’s first round of guided setup which (for some unknown reason) absolutely requires an analog phone line. Yet after that you can use the device with an ethernet connection… Hopefully the snow won’t put a crimp on these plans, because I’d really like to grab the latest episode of Frontline. Tonight’s episode is called A Soldier’s Heart and addresses mental issues that soldiers can experience after battle and various other bits of military service and training.

Worst case I’ll just watch it live, but the TiVo service has been activated, so the device should be as well.

Shows like Frontline are the reason I picked up the TiVo. I almost always miss them, and while I hate scheduling my life around a television show, shows like this are really worth watching. Actually, a number of the shows on PBS restore my faith in television journalism. With all the AOLTWMSNBCBS soundbite-based crap, it’s very refreshing to see a detailed, well-documented story. And no, { Discovery Channel | History Channel | Learning Channel | Whatever } doesn’t hold a candle, because they all seem to be stuck on ‘Big Angry Shop Rats’ or yet another ‘Hitler the Drug Fiend’ or ‘Aliens: The True Story’.

Curiously this morning someone had arranged for Panera to bring in trays of bagels, and there was a espresso-based coffee cart in the cafeteria, all for free. I’m trying to eat less so I skipped the bagel, but a nice double shot of espresso was a nice change of pace from the normal work-provided crap-coffee.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournalweather

PowerLeap

February 26, 2005

Has anyone who reads this ever worked with a PowerLeap CPU upgrade? I’ve got a machine that I’m working on here, and it seems to have a PowerLeap PL-iP3/T in it. The machine boots saying that it’s running with a 111Mhz FSB at 800-some MHz, but installed in this PowerLeap device is a 1.3Ghz Socket 370 Celeron. In addition, the documentation that I got with the computer states that one should “Please disregard the speed shown from the BIOS when you boot. This may not be the true speed of your system.”

I’m… not really sure what to make of this device. It’s currently installed in a 440BX-based Slot 1 board with a mixture of PC100 and PC133 DIMMs. In addition, this motherboard has had it’s BIOS upgraded with one from eSupport.com. I’m not really sure what to think of this place. They seem to sell all sorts of interesting third-party BIOS’, CPU upgrades, etc.

Maybe removing the PC100 memory from the system will help…

computersmoved from livejournal

Fly Strip

February 25, 2005


Click for moblog…

So I was wandering at work, attempting to locate the source of a rather foul smell. In doing so I came across this garbage can which contained some rather populated fly strips. Interestingly, this was not the source of the smell.

With regards to the smell, I’m thinking that someone microwaved some catfish or something of that nature…

UPDATE: There are actually two fly strips, so I pulled them apart and took another picture. That can be found here. I just wish I had a large baggie so I could take them home and photograph them in greater detail.

moved from livejournalwork

Best Buy Part Deux

February 24, 2005

Well, I went to the Utica Best Buy location on the way home. They were not able to duplicate the issue at all. Fortunately after talking to the (much nicer) service guy, I came away with a potential solution. If I can record a video of the problem happening, that will be acceptable as proof. Well, the problem happens a lot, and my phone can record video, so next time it happens I’ll (try) to get video of it. Interestingly, it happened in the car on the way home, but I was so excited that it was happening that I bumped another button before I was able to get the video. Ah well…

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournal

Best Buy Woes

February 24, 2005

So, for the last while the MENU button on my iPod has been intermittantly non-responsive. I can’t help but think that this is a systemic problem with the third generation iPods, partially leading Apple to switch to mechanical buttons (via a rocker wheel) on the latest iPods.

Regardless, I have a four-year warranty for my iPod through Best Buy. I took the device in today to see if they’d swap it, and while the “tech” had the problem happen to him, he noted that it “wasn’t happening anymore” after the first problem with it. Based on that, he determined the iPod wasn’t having problems anymore. He offered to send it out to the repair center for 3-4 weeks to see what they could do… Well… That’d be nice, not having an iPod for 3-4 weeks.

I had been hoping that the “tech”, after having it demonstrated to him that the button occasionally fails to work, would realize that the device really does have issues and get it replaced with a new one. Best Buy’s support isn’t going to be able to repair a capacitive switch that occasionally fails after the device has been sitting for a few minutes.

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournal